In the United States Senate, the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, or more formally, Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee Investigating Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor (1936–1941), began as an inquiry into a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) investigation of methods used by employers in certain industries to avoid collective bargaining with unions.
Between 1936 and 1941, the subcommittee published exhaustive hearings and reports on the use of industrial espionage, private police agencies, strikebreaking services, munitions in industrial warfare, and employers' associations to break strikes and to disrupt legal union activities in other ways. Robert M. La Follette Jr., a Republican and Progressive Party senator from Wisconsin, chaired the committee.
The committee investigated the five largest detective agencies: the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, the National Corporation Service, the Railway Audit and Inspection Company and the Corporations Auxiliary Company. Most of the agencies subpoenaed, including the Pinkerton Agency, attempted to destroy their records before receiving the subpoenas, but enough evidence remained to "piece together a picture of intrigue". It was revealed that Pinkerton had operatives "in practically every union in the country". Of 1,228 operatives, there were five in the United Mine Workers, nine in the United Rubber Workers, seventeen in the United Textile Workers, and fifty-five in the United Auto Workers that had organized General Motors.
The committee reported that as late as 1937, its census of working labor spies from 1933 to 1937 totaled 3,871 for the period. Private security firms like Pinkerton and Burns were employed to infiltrate labor unions. The committee concluded that espionage was "the most efficient method known to management to prevent unions from forming, to weaken them if they secure a foothold, and to wreck them when they try their strength."
The committee also reported:
<blockquote>Such a spy system ... places the employer in the very heart of the union council from the outset of any organizing effort. News of organizers coming into a town, contacts the organizers make among his employees, the names of employees who join the union, all organization plans, all activities of the union—these are as readily available to the employer as though he himself were running the union.</blockquote>
Although the inquiry by the committee achieved minor legal resolutions, it failed to achieve any effective regulatory legislation that might have curtailed the worst practices of strike-breaking agencies. Despite this, the revelations enraged the public as it brought more attention to the grievances of laborers. A subcommittee then became established as the chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, appointed Wisconsin Senator La Follette Jr. to manage the organization. Labeled "Son of the Wild Jackass," and with a prominent politician as a brother, the reputation of La Follette Jr.'s family preceded him. As the newly appointed chairman to the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, La Follette's committee consisted of pro-Republican staff members. La Follette's gifted team of researchers, investigators, attorneys, and writers arose as a prominent governmental team supporting mass labor during the New Deal administration.
Initial grievances of the committee
thumb|left|John Dalrymple, president of the United Rubber Workers of America, testifies in March 1937 that a beating he received in [[Gadsden, Alabama, caused him to be hospitalized for several weeks with a concussion.]]
From 1936 to 1937, the La Follette Committee began its assessment of four prominent anti-union practices which suppressed the advancement of organized laborers. The committee's intentions lay in preserving the rights of the worker when denied by employers, and in 1937, found industrial espionage to be a common tool employed against unions. From "motion-picture producers to steel makers," the enormous number of companies resorting to espionage, reported the La Follette Committee, prevented the practice of collective bargaining between companies and employees. Spies of corporations befriended victims into creating reports which they used to forewarn employers of potential strikes and assemblies. Spying, the La Follette Committee declared, weakens unions and "incites to violence, preaches strikes, inflames the hot-headed and leads the union to disaster". In an effort to utilize the federal government in defending civil liberties, La Follette introduced S.1970 in an effort to remove the four oppressive labor practices noted during the investigation. The California investigations paved the way for the La Follette Committee's effort in fighting for American laborers with senate bills opposing oppressive labor practices.
La Follette Committee and CIO
At the start of the La Follett Committee's investigations, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) launched its campaign to organize the mass production of the steel, automotive, and mining industries. By calling witnesses to the stand in an effort to expose American industrial relations, the committee supported the CIO, as both organizations strove to achieve a common goal of mass unionization. The ability of both organizations to operate in harmony allowed for their shared successes. When Myron Taylor of United States Steel publicly announced that his company would make a legal arrangement with the CIO, the La Follette Committee received wide spread acknowledgment and credit. Although it brought massive amounts of testimony which linked the succumbing of constitutional rights to anti-union policy, the findings of the La Follette Committee had already been previously noted by the Industrial Relations Commission's investigations predating World War I and the Interchurch World Movement analysis in 1919. Despite this, the committee's success and notoriety exceeded previous investigative organizations because of its affiliations with the CIO.